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by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester Takes Care of Castiel, Dean Winchester to the Rescue, Gagged Castiel, Gen, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapped Castiel (Supernatural), Non-Consensual Bondage, Sam Winchester Takes Care of Castiel, Sam Winchester to the Rescue, Tied-Up Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 13:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17407679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Taken by two renegade Men Of Letters, Castiel is the helpless victim of their desire to know if it’s possible to kill not an angel, but his wings.Unless Sam and Dean can reach him in time, they’re going to find out.





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Gunfire.

He thinks he’s imagined it, at first; the room around him makes him feel as if he’s in a vacuum. Sigils marked carefully into the walls, plus those on the straitjacket he was forced into, have deadened his Grace, reducing him to little more than human, and those same walls muffle the sound of anything from outside.

But still, he’s been around the Winchesters long enough to know what shooting sounds like, and it takes a few moments for the dull pops to finally end.

Nothing happens straight away, and that scares him. He knows there were only two of the Men of Letters out there but since he thought there to be _none_ (they all believed every last one to be either deceased or fled back to England) Cas isn’t prepared to count on them not having something up their sleeve to deal with his humans.

After all, they were able to deal with him.

But then something thumps hard against the door, and Cas knows. He cries out, his voice muffled by the gag they shoved in his mouth, and then panics that maybe he won’t be heard.

The thought of Sam and Dean (it’s them, he’s sure it is) leaving because they don’t know he’s in here gives him strength to get up, and strength to stagger the distance to the door, and strength to toss himself against it.

There’s a pause, then another thump from the other side of the door.

He hears a voice that he knows, though it sounds further away than it is.

“Cas? Cas, that you?”

He pushes back, but this time all he can do is slump against the barrier keeping him from his family, and hope that dull acknowledgement is enough.

“Sam, Sam he’s here. Cas, hold on, get back, okay? We’re coming through!”

It’s all Cas can manage to do as Dean instructs, and he falls away from the door rather than stepping back.

But it’s enough to be safe, to give the brothers room to work, and he can hear them throwing themselves at the door.

It gives, and they stumble in, and Cas wishes he had strength enough left to meet them.

But he doesn’t, and then he’s on his knees.

The only thing stopping him from going down completely are the brothers.

They drop down beside him, grabbing hold, keeping him upright, and he can see the horror, the rage, on their faces as they take in his condition.

“Just...just hold on,” Sam says, and Dean reaches around to undo the gag.

He removes it carefully, then throws it aside like it’s tainted.

Cas works his jaw carefully, and his first few words are hoarse, but urgent.

“You need…. Please, please, free my wings.”

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There’s not a lot Dean feels of a mind to be grateful to Arthur Ketch for, but the so called ‘Enochian sedative’, currently responsible for Cas being out cold in the infirmary, is something.

He hates that they had to use it, but there was no other way, not when they’d managed to snap through that first wire, and it had jerked inwards, the edge digging through feathers into flesh, and that was how they knew Cas could still feel his wings, when he started to scream.

Such relief, to know that those bastards who took him had failed, but the agony that came with it was something Cas shouldn’t have had to bear.

And he didn’t, thanks to Ketch. 

It was easier, for sure, to cut Cas’s wings free, snipping through the wire that had been used to crush and twist his wings until they were just a broken bedraggled bundle against his back, while the angel was still and no longer in pain.

Dean is sitting with him now, staring at the bloody tangle of metal lying on the next table over. He still can’t believe they did that, just because they wanted to see if it was possible…

Except he can. He and Sam and Cas know exactly what the Letters are capable of, and trying to constrict an angel’s wings to see if they would die from it, just drop off like blackened flesh, shouldn’t be a shock.

But it is, because they did it to Cas. And Dean can’t help but wonder what if...if they’d been too late. 

If instead of being able to cut the wire off, they hadn’t. It had been wound so tight, a twisted metal lattice, that Dean knows they clipped parts of Cas’s wings as well, in the desperation to free him.

If, instead of those wings rippling and stretching out, with the brothers help, they’d just slumped against Cas’s back, already starting to shrivel up, or already dead.

What if they’d had to cut them off, if they’d been that beyond saving.

He knows he needs to stop, because this is going to make him crazy.

Sam’s standing next to him before Dean even registers he’s come in. He has a glass of whiskey in each hand, and he gives one over.

“He’ll be okay.”

Dean nods, absently. Of course he will. He’s no longer trussed up in a straitjacket, with a fucking gag over his mouth, and thick wire wrapped taut around his wings to see if they could be made to die and drop off like necrotic flesh.

Physically, Cas will be fine.

Sam’s hand finds his shoulder, squeezes. 

It doesn’t seem like a couple of hours ago that both their hands were stained with blood and wing oil, and Dean realises absently that his hands still ache from forcing the wire cutters through the metal trapping Cas’s wings.

“Think we’ll ever catch a fucking break?”

Sam pulls up a stool, slumps down on it. 

“You really want me to answer?”

Dean huffs at him. What’s the point in a lie? But sometimes…. Sometimes, he wants to say _fuck you all_ , just grab Sam, and Cas, and Jack, and take off. 

Find someplace he can secure, someplace that they haven’t holed up in before, that isn’t already tainted because one of them was hurt there, or one of them had died, and they needed somewhere to just pull themselves back together.

Someplace new, where he can keep all of them safe.

Except there is no such place, and he knows it, and every time he knows it it kills him just a little more.

That they’re always going to come back to here.

“He’s alive,” Sam says, as if Dean’s spoken every single word aloud. “We got him back, and he’s alive and he’ll be okay. And we will always come for each other, Dean.”

He nods, staring at the unconscious angel through eyes blurry for nothing to do with the sharp tang of whiskey that nips at his throat when he drains his glass.

That’s the Winchester way, and it’s the only way they’ve got.


End file.
